Machine-to-machine (“M2M”) technology is a growing industry designed to communicatively connect machines to one another. An M2M solutions provider uses M2M technology to provide an M2M solution to a customer. For example, an M2M solutions provider may provide a client such as a trucking company with an M2M solution that communicatively connects the trucking company's fleet of trucks to a company computing system (e.g., a personal or server computer operated by the trucking company). Company personnel may utilize the company computing system to monitor and/or control the fleet of trucks by way of the M2M solution.
An M2M solutions provider may provide an M2M solution over an M2M platform. Accordingly, the M2M solution may be said to be built on the M2M platform, with the M2M platform providing foundational functionality to support the M2M solution. For example, the M2M platform may provide underlying functionality that establishes communication paths and routes communications between a customer computing system and in-field customer assets as part of an M2M solution.
An M2M solutions provider may provide custom M2M solutions to a variety of customers in diverse industries. The delivery and management of diverse, custom M2M solutions can be challenging for the M2M solutions provider. The extent of the challenges faced by the M2M solutions provider may be dictated in large part by the capabilities of the M2M platform that is used by the M2M solutions provider to provide the M2M solutions. The challenges may be exacerbated if the chosen M2M platform lacks flexibility, usability, and/or scalability. Thus, an M2M solutions provider may prefer an M2M platform that is robust, flexible, usable, and/or scalable and that minimizes the challenges faced by the M2M solutions provider in providing diverse, custom M2M solutions. In particular, there is a need for an M2M platform that is capable of being dynamically and seamlessly updated (e.g., by adding functionality to the M2M platform) in a manner that is transparent to a customer of an M2M solutions provider and/or without interrupting runtime operation of the M2M platform.